Properly designing a system to exhibit favorable natural dynamics can greatly simplify designing or learning the control policy. However, it is still unclear what constitutes favorable natural dynamics and how to quantify its effect. Most studies of simple walking and running models have focused on the basins of attraction of passive limit cycles and the notion of self-stability. We instead emphasize the importance of stepping beyond basins of attraction. In this paper, we show an approach based on viability theory to quantify robust sets in state-action space. These sets are valid for the family of all robust control policies, which allows us to quantify the robustness inherent to the natural dynamics before designing the control policy or specifying a control objective. We illustrate our formulation using spring-mass models, simple low-dimensional models of running systems. We then show an example application by optimizing robustness of a simulated planar monoped, using a gradient-free optimization scheme. Both case studies result in a nonlinear effective stiffness providing more robustness.

52nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Psychology, July 2019 (conference)

Abstract

Stimulus-response learning constitutes an important part of human experience over the life course. Independent of the domain, it is characterized by changes in performance with increasing task progress. But what cognitive mechanisms are responsible for these changes and how do additional task requirements affect the related dynamics? To inspect that in more detail, we introduce a computational modeling approach that investigates performance-related changes in learning situations with reference to chunk activation patterns. It leverages the cognitive architecture ACT-R to model learner behavior in abstract stimulus-response learning in two conditions of task complexity. Additional situational demands are reflected in embedded secondary tasks that interrupt participants during the learning process. Our models apply an activation equation that also takes into account the association between related nodes of information and the similarity between potential responses. Model comparisons with two human datasets (N = 116 and N = 123 participants) indicate a good fit in terms of both accuracy and reaction times. Based on the existing neurophysiological mapping of ACT-R modules on defined human brain areas, we convolve recorded module activity into simulated BOLD responses to investigate underlying cognitive mechanisms in more detail. The resulting evidence supports the connection of learning effects in both task conditions with activation-related patterns to explain changes in performance.

The split-attention effect refers to learning with related representations in multimedia. Spatial proximity and integration of these representations are crucial for learning processes. The influence of varying amounts of proximity between related and unrelated information has not yet been specified. In two experiments (N1 = 98; N2 = 85), spatial proximity between a pictorial presentation and text labels was manipulated (high vs. medium vs. low). Additionally, in experiment 1, a control group with separated picture and text presentation was implemented. The results revealed a significant effect of spatial proximity on learning performance. In contrast to previous studies, the medium condition leads to the highest transfer, and in experiment 2, the highest retention score. These results are interpreted considering cognitive load and instructional efficiency. Findings indicate that transfer efficiency is optimal at a medium distance between representations in experiment 1. Implications regarding the spatial contiguity principle and the spatial contiguity failure are discussed.

Social robots or collaborative robots that have to interact with people in a reactive way are difficult to program. This difficulty stems from the different skills required by the programmer: to provide an engaging user experience the behavior must include a sense of aesthetics while robustly operating in a continuously changing environment. The Playful framework allows composing such dynamic behaviors using a basic set of action and perception primitives. Within this framework, a behavior is encoded as a list of declarative statements corresponding to high-level sensory-motor couplings. To facilitate non-expert users to program such behaviors, we propose a Learning from Demonstration (LfD) technique that maps motion capture of humans directly to a Playful script. The approach proceeds by identifying the sensory-motor couplings that are active at each step using the Viterbi path in a Hidden Markov Model (HMM). Given these activation patterns, binary classifiers called evaluations are trained to associate activations to sensory data. Modularity is increased by clustering the sensory-motor couplings, leading to a hierarchical tree structure. The novelty of the proposed approach is that the learned behavior is encoded not in terms of trajectories in a task space, but as couplings between sensory information and high-level motor actions. This provides advantages in terms of behavioral generalization and reactivity displayed by the robot.

Observed influences of system response delay in spoken human-machine dialogues are rather ambiguous and mainly focus on perceived system quality. Studies that systematically inspect effects on cognitive performance are still lacking, and effects of individual characteristics are also often neglected. Building on benefits of cognitive training for decelerating cognitive decline, this Wizard-of-Oz study addresses both issues by testing 62 elderly participants in a dialogue-based memory training with a virtual agent. Participants acquired the method of loci with fading instructional guidance and applied it afterward to memorizing and recalling lists of German nouns. System response delays were randomly assigned, and training performance was included as potential mediator. Participants’ age, gender, and subscales of affinity for technology (enthusiasm, competence, positive and negative perception of technology) were inspected as potential moderators. The results indicated positive effects on recall performance with higher training performance, female gender, and less negative perception of technology. Additionally, memory retention and facets of affinity for technology moderated increasing system response delays. Participants also provided higher ratings in perceived system quality with higher enthusiasm for technology but reported increasing frustration with a more positive perception of technology. Potential explanations and implications for the design of spoken dialogue systems are discussed.

Our goal is to understand the principles of Perception, Action and Learning in autonomous systems that successfully interact with complex environments and to use this understanding to design future systems